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    On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature
    Unavailable
    On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature
    Unavailable
    On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature
    Ebook312 pages4 hours

    On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature

    By Melanie Challenger

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In this “strange hybrid of travelogue and natural science” the award-winning author explores extinction with “solid research . . . and truly poetic prose” (New York Times Review of Books).
     
    Award-winning author, poet, and scholar Melanie Challenger saw a link between her own estrangement from nature and the cultural shifts that led to a dramatic rise in extinction. Inspired to uncover how we had become so destructive, Challenger went in search of the stories behind these losses.
     
    From an abandoned mine in England to an Antarctic sea voyage; from a visit to South Georgia’s old whaling stations to a stay among an Inuit community in Canada; and from the Falkland Islands to Manhattan Island and beyond, Challenger uncovers lost species and lost languages, as well as cultures, industries, and communities touched in different ways by extinction.
     
    On each of these peregrinations, Challenger also explores the thoughts of anthropologists, biologists, and philosophers who have come before her. Drawing on their words as well as firsthand accounts and ancestral memory, she traces the mindset that made the 20th century an age of extinction, then proposes a path of redemption rooted in our emotional responses to these disappearances.
     
    On Extinction offers an “erudite and impassioned . . . examination on the way our 21st century world is changing so quickly” (Dallas Morning News).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateDec 1, 2012
    ISBN9781619021440
    Unavailable
    On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature
    Author

    Melanie Challenger

    Zlata Filipovic wrote her diary between September 1991 and October 1993. Following its publication, she was awarded the Special Child of Courage Award by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. She and her family left Sarajevo in December of 1993, and used the proceeds from the book to launch a charity for child victims of the Bosnian war.

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    Reviews for On Extinction

    3.5/5

    7 ratings1 review

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    • 3/5
      I had certain expectations of this book having read poetry and an essay by Melanie challenger that I thought was excellent. However I took a while to read "Extinction" because I kept losing interest and therefore the thread of what the author is trying to convey. There's much about the history of the whaling industry but I couldn't tell really how this related to the idea of extinction. There are some interesting historical and other stories but the most interesting and engaging ones are the author's personal experiences and observations as she travels to various parts of the world including Cornwall, Whitby and Antarctica.It is a book about our - or the author's - loss or lack of connection with nature; natural observations do not play a strong part in the book itself. Some passages are written with beautiful language. It's a book that I feel I should have got more from.